By Annette Wambulwa, NAIROBI Kenya
Kenya Judicial Services Commission acting chairperson, Prof Olive Mugenda on Tuesday announced the commission has unanimously agreed to nominate Justice Martha Koome as the next Chief Justice.
The Judiciary is now
firmly run by females - acting CJ (Philomena Mwilu); Vice Chair JSC (Olive
Mugenda); acting President Court of Appeal (Wanjiru Karanja); Principal Judge,
High Court ( Lydia Achode ); Principal Judge, ELRC, (Maureen Onyango);
Judiciary Chief Registrar (Anne Amadi); Registrar, High Court (Judy Omange);
Registrar Supreme Court (Esther Nyaiyaki); Registrar JSC (Frida Mokaya).
Koome has 33 years of
experience in legal practice under her belt and a significant portion of those
years has been in public service as a defender of human rights.
For this, she has
earned international accolades for tremendous contribution to jurisprudence in
the expansion of the rule of law and defence of the vulnerable.
She is an acclaimed
expert in family law and she takes a keen interest in children which earned her
a recent recognition by the United Nations where she was named the UN person of
the year run-up in 2020.
Mugenda declined to
disclose how other candidates faired in the interviews, saying the JSC's job
was to get a Chief justice and that's what was done.
Earlier, the Court of
Appeal stayed the orders issued by the High Court barring the recruitment of the
Chief Justice.
Justice Patrick Kiage
on Tuesday said it is in the public interest that they have decided to stay the
order.
Interviews scheduled
for this week for the Supreme Court judge can proceed though they will behind
by two days.
"The orders
granted by the high court last week barring the continuation of the recruitment
and appointment of the chief justice and is hereby stayed pending the hearing
of this intended appeal," the court ruled.
The three-judge bench
has stayed the orders saying that the High Court did not deal with the issue of
jurisdiction before they issued the orders.
Speaking to the press
after the ruling, Lawyer Danstan Omari representing one of the petitioners says
they are not satisfied with the ruling but they cannot move to the Supreme
Court.
Omari said as it is
now, there are only four judges at the apex court when you remove Deputy CJ
Philomena Mwilu who is at JSC and can not handle the matter.
The appellate judges
who heard the case were Justices Roselyne Nambuye, Patrick Kiage and Sankale
Ole Kantai.
The three judges were
expected to give the ruling on Monday, however, judge Roselyne Nambuye said it
was not ready.
The court had on
Monday morning heard the appeal filed by the JSC and AG challenging the orders
halting the Chief Justice recruitment.
The commission was
seeking to suspend the orders issued by the High Court last week halting the
recruitment.
The JSC had warned
there will be a constitutional crisis if the selection of the CJ and a Supreme
Court judge is not concluded.
It had asked the
Court of Appeal to quash the decision halting the recruitment process.
Last Friday, JSC
chair Prof Olive Mugenda said the commission would not conduct interviews for
the Supreme Court judge that were scheduled for this week because of the
orders.
The commission has
also been barred from deliberating on the suitability of the 10 candidates
interviewed for the CJ position.
On Monday, Justices
Juma Chitembwe and Martha Koome were to be interviewed for the position of
Supreme Court judge.
JSC argued that if
the orders are not set aside there will be a legal vacuum especially in the
process of recruiting the Chief Justice.
The four petitioners
on their part challenged Mugenda position as chair of the commission during the
interview.
They further claim
that commissioner Paul Gichuhi retired from public service and is illegally
sitting in the commission.
No comments:
Post a Comment